Hello everyone,
This is my first time on here but I’m having terrible difficulty with ‘spitting stitches’ and the dreadful pain that comes with it.
I had a left lumpectomy and reconstruction and a right reduction approx 9 weeks ago. All went really well with the surgery, the pain post op was very well managed with morphine and paracetomol and all was healing beautifully until about 3 weeks post op when my deducted right started extruding very long serrated nylon stitches. My breast care dressings nurses have been fantastic and seeing me every few days to dress the wounds but the pain these extruding stitches have caused has been so bad I’ve had to start taking morphine again. The stitches extrude to about 4-5 inches and once out there’s no pain. The nurses gently pulled out the end of one and o had to pull the other that followed as the pain was excutiating.
whilst extruding it caused the pain to develop along the incision site itself I suspect as it was serrated and tried to cling to the surrounding tissue. This irritation caused the incision line to open up in places and has taken longer to heal.
The left has started to heal now and no pain but about two weeks ago the same started happening to the right but the extrusion was near my central breast bone end and not under my arm this time. Again the pain is dreadful and having seen my surgeon who apologised and another consultant who sympathised but said he himself doesn’t use this type of stitch for exactly the problems I am having I’m just wondering if anyone has had this issue and why these stitches are used? I’m being measured for radiotherapy next week and am now worried I won’t be healed sufficiently for the tissues not to be more damaged than they would be if they were healed?
Anyone else have this issue and was you radiotherapy ok because of it?
Hi FMB and I see it's your first post so a very warm welcome to the Community but sorry to hear about your journey,
Navigating the cancer journey can be such a stressful and challenging time but getting support from people who have walked the ‘exact same' cancer journey can help a lot. (I have a completely different cancer).
The Community is actually divided into dedicated Cancer Support Groups (Discussion Rooms) so can I recommend you join and post in our dedicated Breast Cancer support group. This will be a safe place to talk to others with a similar diagnosis, treatment experience, to ask questions and get support.
To connect in with the group please click on the link below 
…… then once the group page opens click in the [Black - Click to Join - Banner] that appears at the bottom of the page and this will then confirm that you have joined the group.
When you are ready……. you can introduce yourself by putting up your very own post by clicking [+ Create new post] or [ + ] in the top right of the group page.
You can copy and paste the text from this post into your new post.
